PROPAGANDA MACHINE

Facebook Shuts Down Massive Nicaraguan Troll Farm Targeting Students

The social media platform announced that it has removed almost a thousand fake accounts that were used to spread pro-government propaganda and discredit student dissidents.

Facebook says it removed a covert influence campaign waged by a pro-government Nicaraguan troll farm that used sock puppets to criticize student protesters in the country and amplify state propaganda from the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front-led government. Security researchers at the social media company say they removed nearly a thousand inauthentic Facebook accounts and 363 fake Instagram accounts that were used by a pro-government troll farm that operated on accounts on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms dating back to 2018.

Troll farm operators also tried to use Facebook’s own reporting mechanisms through “coordinated reporting of government critics in an apparent attempt to have them taken down from our platform to silence them,” including some posts identifying the location of the troll farm located inside Nicaragua’s telecommunications regulator, Telcor. The social media company claims that the “great majority” of attempts to get opposition accounts suspended were false.